KOKO Asia News
Censoring the Manics
Date: 15 May 2009
By Johnny Mayo
The Manic Street Preachers return next week with their ninth studio album Journal For Plague Lovers, but what’s an album release without a good, old fashioned kick-off between the band and the retailers?
Many outlets across the UK (albeit the crappy supermarket outlets, not genuine music pushers) are censoring the new albums artwork for fears it might offend shoppers and corrupt the fragile little minds of their young ‘uns. The artwork on the sleeve is from accomplished painter Jenny Saville who also did the artwork for the bands 1994 album The Holy Bible.
Featuring what appears to be a small child who has been on the receiving end of one almighty bitch slap, Tesco’s and Co. have gone all out to protect the unsuspecting public by covering the offending artwork on all their shelves.
Singer James Dean Bradfield has admitted in an interview with BBC Radio 6 that most of the controversy has gone over his head. "We just thought it was a beautiful painting. We were all in total agreement."
"It is her brushwork, If you're familiar with her work, there's a lot of ochres and browns and reds and browns and perhaps people are looking for us to be more provocative than we are being. We just saw a much more modern version of Lucian Freud-esque brushstrokes. That's all we saw." he told BBC 6 Music.
James did go on to make a fairly valid point that most magazines and CD covers feature partially clothed women and nice shiny guns, however with the recent furore about the Manic’s new album cover it is unlikely that we are going to see a trend of battered children in our record collection anytime soon. Sorry to get everyone’s hopes up...
